Don't Fear the Reaper

28) Hehe... Tis More Angst

Dick sat in the cave, his head in his hands. He knew his family was worried about him, but he couldn't convince himself to care. They asked him daily if he was okay, and he always put on a practiced smile and said that he was fine, only a bit tired, but on the inside he was decomposing.

He had a chance— fuck it, he had two.

Two chances to save that kid, and yet both times he had failed.

Nico was brought to him by chance that day in Blüdhaven, but Dick had been afraid and he lost him.

Then he was brought back again, this time by the League of Assassins and Talia, and he wasn't afraid this time. He wasn't afraid of being like Bruce anymore— instead he was both too much like the man and not enough.

He had looked at Nico for the first time, not as a kid who was suffering and in pain, but as a memory he couldn't quite place. He got so wrapped up in the idea that Nico was familiar, that he couldn't fully see the kid that was in front of him. Dick had wasted so much time watching him with an analytical gaze— hoping to match the Reaper with some vague memory he had repressed— that he didn't see what what right in front of him: a kid who was alone in this world and needed his help.

That day when Dick found him having a panic attack, it should have started that day. Dick should have thrown aside his selfish quest of trying to figure out who he was and just seen  him. Dick had been so mixed up with layered emotions from a memory he couldn't even grasp, that he let Nico slip through his fingers once again.

They had been so close this time. Nico had opened up. He spoke to them. He showed them glimpses of his life— the one he had before that day in Blüdhaven. Nico, even after all the suffering he had endured, had tried to be a part of the group. Maybe it was only subconscious, or maybe he knew what he was doing, but Nico had tried to let them in.

And yet Dick still failed. The day Nico left the manor, something slipped in Dick. It was a piece of him that had shattered long ago and had taken  years of constant work to put back together. It was the part of him that watched his parents die. It was the part of him that heard about Jason's death after being an asshole to the kid the entire time he'd known him. It was the part of him that shifted every time he lost a teammate or a friend. It was the part of him that had been to so many funerals for people who were only trying to do good.

It was the piece of him that he had forced back into place despite all the pain and suffering, because there was no way to survive without it.

It was the piece that he had lost once again.

"Dick?" A voice called cautiously, snapping him out of his head.

Dick looked up, seeing Bruce sitting across from him. Alfred had taken him off bedrest, though the elderly man had forced him to move about the manor and cave in a wheelchair. Bruce had been against it at first, but he eventually gave in considering there was no way in hell he was winning an argument against Alfred.

"Hey B," Dick said tiredly.

Bruce watched him for a long moment, not saying anything, before he moved over and typed for a moment on the control board.

Dick heard two short beeps and a long one, a signal he had learned years ago that meant the cave was on a non-emergency lockdown— meaning that Bruce needed to have a private conversation without anyone coming in.

"Bruce, I'm fine. I'm just-"

"Tired?" Bruce said skeptically, his face showing that he didn't believe him for a single second. "Dick, we both know that's not true— or at least that you being tired is more of a symptom rather than that root issue."